Performance appraisal interviews: Preference organization in assessment sequences

Performance appraisal interviews play a crucial role in internal communication. Most of the research on performance appraisal interviews has focused on strategic aims and interview design, but less attention has been given to the way in which performance appraisal interviews actually take place. In this study, the focus will, therefore, be to investigate how one of the crucial and most delicate activi-ties in performance appraisal interviews, namely, giving critical feedback, is conducted. The way crit-ical feedback is given is predominantly through negative assessments. The results indicate that there is an orientation to critical feedback as a socially problematic action despite the institutional char-acter of the talk. Moreover, it can be seen that the more the supervisor shows an orientation to nega-tive assessments as being socially problematic, the more difficult it becomes for the employee to deal with negative assessments. The study ends by outlining various implications for the workplace